


Fun/Anger/Euphoria

by MirandaHamilton



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst sandwich with soft bread, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Talking, laying in bed, rated M mostly for drug use, so many feelings, soft moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 00:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29991111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirandaHamilton/pseuds/MirandaHamilton
Summary: Three mornings throughout their lives.
Relationships: Stewy Hosseini/Kendall Roy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Fun/Anger/Euphoria

_College -_

In their dorm one Saturday morning, Stewy chews on a doughnut as Kendall hurls his phone on the ground. Kendall’s girlfriend has just called to tell him she’s breaking up with him because he’s a terrible boyfriend who hasn’t made the time of day for her in more than a week. “She breaks up with me over the fucking _phone_?” Kendall half-wails, but his voice is raspy, more morose than angry as he blearily watches the phone bounce on the rug.

“Well, yeah,” says Stewy from his bed, picking up another doughnut from the box, even though he hasn’t finished the first one. “You have to, you know, spend actual time with the person you’re dating. She’s not a bong. You can’t take a hit of her when you’re hard and then go soft and keep her in a drawer until next time you want your dick sucked.”

Kendall lays back on his own bed across from Stewy. “It wasn’t _more_ than a week. I thought she understood that I’m fucking busy _all_ the fucking time.”

Stewy rolls his eyes as he munches. “Okay, so you explained to her that she’s less important than that weird-ass project your dad gave you as homework?”

“It’s not homework,” Kendall snaps. “It’s a data analysis report I’m turning in to him every week based on info about stock numbers and company shares. It’s like a prepping-for-Waystar thing.”

“Uh huh. Fascinating. You should send her roses, you know. With a little card that says, ‘Sorry I prioritized my daddy over you, here are some flowers to cover up the smell of what a piece of shit I am.’”

Kendall makes a strangled sound in his throat, then leans up on his elbows and squints at Stewy. “Why are you so invested in this? I’m starting to think _you’re_ in love with her or something.”

“Fuck, Ken.” Stewy licks powdered sugar from his fingertips. “It’s so simple that it’s stupid. You go out with a girl. It goes great for a week. Fucking hearts and rainbows. Then your dad calls and you drop everything to try to micromanage the whole company. I mean, I get that part. That’s business, and it’s gonna be your business some day. But you don’t have to fuck over everyone else in your life just because your dad is sitting on your shoulder every day like some weird geriatric parrot. You can still shit gold coins but use some of them to buy someone a fucking drink once in a while.” He picks up the doughnut again and rips a piece from it with his teeth so that Kendall can’t see how his mouth has scrunched up in frustration. Because this time, it’s personal.

Kendall pushes up from his elbows and sits fully up now. He’s sucking on his lower lip and watching Stewy with concentration, like Stewy is a chess piece.

“Buying a drink? Is this because I ditched you at the bar last month? When I promised I’d be there?”

“Fuck, no. Fuck you.” Stewy keeps chewing even when there’s almost nothing left to swallow. “Yeah, you were an asshole, but the sky is blue, grass is green.”

Kendall blinks at him, slowly. “I told you why I couldn’t come. I had that test early the next morning. I said I was sorry.”

“Yeah huh. It’s whatever. The beauty of getting wasted is that Roys are, thank

fuck, completely optional, and usually unnecessary.”

“You’re still mad.”

Stewy reaches for another doughnut, but he’s eaten them all. He stares into the mess of crumbs in the empty box. He actually had what most people would call a pretty decent time at the bar. The drinks were good. Guys he knew were there. He’d even made out with a girl for awhile, although when she invited him back to her dorm, he’d politely declined. He knew it would be a bad idea to go home with someone when all he could think of was how much he didn’t want to think about Kendall.

He sighs. “I don’t get _mad_ at you, Kendall. Being mad takes energy. You might be my best friend, but when you fuck me over, guess what? I don’t bend.” He neatly closes the box and drops it on his nightstand. Then he lays back on his pillow, hands folded over his chest, feet crossed. “ _I_ ,” he says pointedly, “am made of fucking steel.”  
He closes his eyes and keeps them closed even when he feels the weight of Kendall sinking onto the end of the bed. He still keeps them closed when he feels Kendall’s fingertip trace his lips.

“You _are_ mad. You are definitely mad. Just how mad are you?”

There’s a teasing note in his voice that’s infuriatingly delicious to hear.

Stewy opens his eyes. Kendall has the tip of his tongue between his lips and he’s blinking slowly, almost languidly.

Stewy uncurls his hands where they’ve been lying on his chest. A thin sheen of sweat has broken out on his palms. He takes a breath that snags on his lungs and his words come out husky. “You ditched me. You said you’d be there. This is the least you could do.” He watches Kendall’s finger hovering near his mouth. Then he catches it between his teeth and holds it there.

Kendall yelps but doesn’t pull his hand away. They stay frozen like that, Kendall’s finger in Stewy’s mouth, the tip of Stewy’s tongue touching Kendall’s finger pad.

“This, just so we’re clear, is not a pity fuck,” Stewy says around Kendall’s finger. “This is not because you just got dumped. It’s like any other time. It’s just because you feel like it, and I don’t mind giving it to you.”

“Right,” Kendall agrees. “You ‘don’t mind.’ That’s a cute way of saying you love fucking me.”

“That is absolutely not what I said. You’ve been a real prick lately, so I just want you to know that for every second we do this, I’m thinking _Fuck you_ at you, okay?”

“Good,” says Kendall, and Stewy bites his finger until Kendall finally yanks it away with a gasp. He slams his mouth against Stewy’s and powdered sugar from one of Stewy’s doughnuts gets between their faces. The room smells so sweet now.

The _being roommates_ thing didn’t seem to mean much at first. Stewy would listen to Kendall’s rants about his family, and how Kendall would keep talking even after Stewy had tuned him out. He had dealt with Kendall subsequently asking why Stewy wasn’t listening to him anymore, and Stewy having to drop his homework and sit with his face in his hands as Kendall had picked up rambling where he left off.

Stewy doesn’t like the word “protective.” He wouldn’t have said it’s what he felt when he had seen Kendall get off the phone with his dad, and he could tell right away that Kendall had just gotten a talking-to over god knows what (that _family_ and the amount of therapy they need). It’s more like he felt like he was a good shoulder for Kendall to lean on when he got that long, hang-dog face. Stewy is good for Kendall in that way, and he likes feeling useful.

Physically touching started when it was useful too. It, like many things, began with the drugs, the endless lines of coke they would form with credit cards and sometimes just their fingers when they get too high to focus. One night Kendall had tapped the rest of his coke along the side of his hand and offered it to Stewy and Stewy hadn’t missed a heartbeat in pulling Kendall’s hand to his nose, fingers firm around Kendall’s wrist. It had felt good to make physical contact with Kendall. After they had sobered up, Stewy had realized it was the first physical contact they’d ever made.

Which was fine. Then it began to bleed into sober moments, like the time Kendall had returned from Thanksgiving break and announced that his dad was remarrying, and even though Kendall had the bare minimum of a relationship with his own mother, he still felt weirdly sad. Stewy had clapped a hand on Kendall’s shoulder without thinking, and Kendall had said, “Thanks, man.”

“Yeah, always,” Stewy had replied.

_Always_?

What a terrifying word.

Stewy had eventually lost count of the number of times he snorted coke off Kendall’s hand or patted him on the back in consolation. He had told himself that he could stop any time if he wanted to. He just didn’t want to, and that was okay. Nothing he couldn’t fix if it became a problem.

Then he and Kendall had gone to some hip-hop concert of a band Kendall was obsessed with. Stewy couldn’t have cared less about it, but Kendall had asked him, so he did what best friends do and went with him. Kendall lolling against the people next to him while literally bouncing, feet a full inch off the ground, shouting the lyrics back at the band while strobe lights swam over his face had not been a sight Stewy had expected. Yeah, Kendall always played music too loud back in their dorm. But seeing him in actual ecstasy as the beats had slammed against the walls and beer had gotten spilled on his feet and he hadn’t looked like he cared about anything else in the world had made Stewy almost feel ecstatic, too. Almost, he’d told himself.

It didn’t turn out to be an _almost_ , though. It turned out to be a _definitely_. “You looked dumb,” he’d told Kendall after the show had ended, and then they’d fucked in the club bathroom.

So _always_ has stopped feeling like a problem. It’s started feeling normal. Feeling fun.

Now, Stewy licks a streak of sugar off Kendall’s chin. “Got coke on you,” he says. Kendall laughs, and Stewy uses the unguarded moment to roll Kendall onto his back and pin him there, sugar rubbing between their faces the whole time.  
***

_A few years ago-_

“Do you want more sugar? God, this coffee is good.”

“It’s the same coffee from the same café as always. You’ve had it literally ten million times. And no I don’t want more sugar. I feel fucking ill watching you pour ten packets in yours.”

“Yeah but Stew, I haven’t had this coffee in ages. You try drinking rehab coffee for months and get back to me.”

“No thanks. _Hey_ , watch it-” Stewy just barely rights Kendall’s cup before coffee spills on their chests, which are currently pressed together. Seeing each other this morning, for the first time since Kendall was discharged, was definitely a good idea. Fucking on Stewy’s couch before eating breakfast was maybe a less good idea in theory, but god, it hasn’t been months since they’ve actually been together. It’s been _years_.

“Does Rava know you’re here?” Stewy asks as Kendall awkwardly sips from his cup where he’s lying with his head against Stewy’s shoulder. They should really move this to the bed, or at least sit upright, but laying naked together beats practicalities every time.

“No.” Kendall swallows and Stewy feels him close his eyes, the barest pressure of his lashes against Stewy’s skin. “I saw her yesterday and she didn’t ask what I was doing today. I don’t think it feels real to her yet, me being back and…you know. The rest.”

“Yeah,” Stewy says. He doesn’t ask Kendall to elaborate on whether he and Rava have settled on divorce or separation. “I get it.”

“I don’t want to think about it.” Kendall sets his cup back on the coffee table and buries his head into the crook of Stewy’s neck. “I just want to feel good. _Old times_ kind of good.”

“Just the old times? How about new times, too?” Stewy carefully replaces his own cup on the table and wraps his arms around Kendall. His temple is starting to pulse.

Kendall hums vaguely. “New times?”

And Stewy briefly feels sicker than if he were watching Kendall pour sugar. “This isn’t going to last, is it?” he asks before he has time to second guess himself. He doesn’t want his heart rate to pick up. He can’t risk Kendall hearing or feeling it.

“What isn’t?” Kendall says, voice muffled into Stewy’s skin.

Stewy tries, but can’t suppress his sigh. He feels his eyelashes fluttering and he’s glad Kendall can’t see his face. “When you leave this room, it’s over. I mean yeah, I’ll still see you around, business stuff maybe, or maybe we’ll do drinks or something, but there won’t be any more fucking, or even just hanging out. But we’re not going to be together. I know you, Ken. Casual isn’t going to cut it for either of us. We have a chance to do this now, really do it, really make it, but you’re gonna leave it all at the door when you go. So what are you going to do next?”

Kendall doesn’t move for at least a minute, his warm breaths sticking to Stewy’s skin. When he finally speaks, it sounds like his voice is made of threads and that they’re breaking. “Aren’t we being casual right now, and it feels okay?”

Stewy steels himself against the threads of steadiness he feels Kendall trimming away in his own voice. He moves his head away from Kendall’s mouth. “The fact that you asked that and not about what you’re going to do next really says everything, doesn’t it?”

Kendall pushes away from him and sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the couch and bundling up his clothes from the floor. Stewy watches as he dresses and takes his coat from the hook by the door, leaving his still half-full coffee cup on the table. “I didn’t think,” Kendall says in a low voice, still breaking but pressing on, “that you would be mad.”

Stewy scoffs and sits up. “Ken, all I did was give you the facts, do I _sound_ mad?”

“No. You sound pretty indifferent, actually, and that’s kind of a fuckton worse.”

“So make it better.”

Kendall gestures, both arms flapping vaguely. “ _How_ , Stew? When you’ve just told me how it’s going to be?”

“Tell me in your own words. What’s your future like? And make it a good speech, not some ‘boo-fuckity-hoo aww poor Stew’ bullshit.”

Kendall makes a frustrated growling sound, but when he speaks, his voice is low and earnest, confidential, like he’s huddling with Stewy during a football game. “Look. Stuff is about to get fucking crazy. Dad told me I’m gonna move up soon, and it’s only a matter of time before he retires, like two years probably, and then things will get serious as all motherfuck. So I can’t be at your apartment every night, you know, I can’t do this like we’re still in college and have the time and energy for each other-”

“Pitiful fucking answer.” Stewy wipes his hands on a napkin and tilts his head at Kendall. “If you’re gonna tell me, don’t give me a soft dick answer like that. Fuck me hard.”

Kendall drops his coat and crouches near Stewy. “I didn’t want it to go down like this. I didn’t want to have to tell you that I can’t put you first. We’ve never even been _together_ , have we? Not _really_ , right? But I was fucking serious about us being casual. I can do that, I-”

“Nope. Still bad.” Stewy crumples a napkin and throws it in Kendall’s face. “It’s not that you _can’t._ It’s that you _don’t want to._ Putting your energy into Waystar will pay off way more than putting energy into me. It can give you power. I can give you a blow job. We both know which one you actually want to wake up to.”

Kendall opens his mouth but says nothing. He moves his hand near Stewy’s knee instead.

“Yeah,” Stewy says. “You can touch me.”

Kendall withdraws his hand.

“That’s what I thought.” Stewy leans back against the couch. “Anything else?”

Kendall picks up his coat, doesn’t look back, and leaves.

Stewy feels like there’s broken glass behind his eyes, hopeless and messy, but he does _not_ fucking cry. He sprinkles a line of coke on the coffee table, then another.

There was a time back in college when he and Kendall briefly fucked in places more public than club bathrooms. In bar back alleys by dumpsters, in beach coves on spring breaks, hell, even in the most remote library stacks once. They were so high that they even half-wanted to be caught, if only to have to make the dean physically write in their records, “Committed public intercourse on campus.” Hilarious.

Stewy is angry, now, that in a private place, his own apartment, is where the story ends. It’s something that should be happening outside, with other people to witness it. For Kendall to see people watching him telling Stewy in so many words that now, when they have a chance to make a new start, to be actually together, _now_ is when he’s walking away. 

_Were_ they ever actually together? Stewy grudgingly admits that it’s debatable. He didn’t have a lot of interest in girls, but Kendall did. Kendall went on plenty of dates, would even sometimes be officially dating a girl when he was fucking Stewy. Stewy could never bring himself to feel bad about that. Kendall and the girl would eventually break up. They always did. And even if he and Kendall weren’t fucking, they were always together. They always called each other _best_ _friends_.

They never said _I love you_. But that was okay. It was even okay when Kendall got married. Stewy didn’t feel like anything essential had changed. Yeah, they weren’t going to fuck anymore, but they were still going to be the loves of each other’s lives. That was a given. Even Rava seemed to know it, the look in her eyes when she’d see the two of them together, Stewy’s arm around Kendall and Kendall leaning into his touch, both grinning over some private joke.

Stewy thinks of the million “go private” or “go public” jokes he could make about this, how he could pick one and use it as a mantra to move on. Because you have to move on from something that was never going to follow you in the first place.

_Always._ What a joke.

Still. He had wanted them to finally be exclusive, and apparently that was asking the world. Kendall’s world. He should have known better than to expect anything but Kendall bending for Waystar.

Stewy does another line and contemplates changing his number just to fuck with Kendall. Even by his petty standards, though, that would be pretty fucked up.

***

 _Today_ -

“I fucked up with you pretty badly.”

“Yeah.” Stewy turns off his phone, still buzzing with alerts and clips from the press conference, and tosses it onto his bed. It sails past Kendall’s face and Kendall winces and shifts on the edge of the mattress. He taps one foot on the floor. He still looks fresh and crisp in his suit, not a hair out of place, like he brushed up and polished himself directly after leaving the conference this morning and arriving at Stewy’s place.

Stewy stands over him, arms crossed. “I’m very, _very_ aware that you fucked up with me pretty badly, Kendall.”

“Shit.” Kendall runs a hand through his hair, messing up one side of it, looking slightly less immaculate than before. “Okay. The ‘I’m sorry’ speech. I’ve been practicing it even before I got off the yacht.”

“This one?” Stewy presses a hand over his heart and holds his other hand out in the air, like he’s an actor on stage reciting a grand soliloquy. “‘I’m sorry, Stewy. I fucked you over, and then I realized I was wrong, so now I’ve come to make amends. I’m back on your side now. We’re going to take down my evil motherfucking asshole dickmunching father together, and we’re going to win. We’re going to win because you’re going to help me. I need your help or else I can’t do this. Did I mention that I am just so, so, _so_ fucking sorry?’”

Stewy drops his arms and Kendall inhales. “Yeah,” Kendall says quietly. “You really nailed it.”

“Of course I fucking did. I could make you beg me, you know.”

“Yeah, you could.”

“Would you beg me?”

Kendall meets his eyes. “No.”

“No?” Stewy jerks his head back and frowns, scrunching up his face. “Why the fuck not? After what you did to me?”

Kendall grips the edge of the bed, but he keeps his eyes fixed on Stewy’s. “Because I _am_ sorry for what I did, and I was gonna give you the laundry list of apologies. But I am _not_ crossing the line of begging. Because I’m enjoying feeling like I broke my life apart and built it back again, built it better, like I straightened up after bending over for years, like some, I don’t know, I feel like a force of fucking nature, for once, and I will not let anyone, not even you, take that from me. Not today, and, actually, you know what? Not ever. I’m done. I’m free. And yeah, as you can tell, I’m back with you.” He doesn’t blink, doesn’t hesitate. “For good, if you still want.”

“Bingo. Bull’s eye. Right fucking answer, fucking _finally_ ,” Stewy says as he shoves Kendall back on the bed, presses his palms against his cheeks, and kisses him until he can’t breathe. Kendall makes a relieved, gasping noise as he wraps his arms around Stewy’s back. Stewy focuses intently on breathing for only half a second before he dives down to Kendall’s mouth again and they get to the glorious task of removing their clothes.

When Stewy was just starting college, a family friend told him that he’d do well in life because he was _laser-focused_. It’s never a word Stewy has used to describe himself. Lasers can be switched off, their paths broken. The kind of focus Stewy has is cut from a diamond mine, honed to precision to attack any problem and carve away at it until it turns to dust. School, work, any type of competition. He can always crack it because he’s uncrackable.

He knows it’s what people have always liked about him, his charm that has chainmail underneath. Technically it’s concealed, but everyone knows it’s there (and that’s pretty sexy, too). It’s why people want to be his friend, why they invited him to clubs and parties in school and tried to get him into business with them as an adult, and in general let themselves be spun around in his orbit, respecting his every word and move. His mind, his acumen for simplifying problems and turning them into brilliant opportunities, his creativity and sociability, it’s all what’s brought him to the top of every ladder he’s climbed. Assessing the time, the place, the people, the hidden meanings between words, the hidden gears at work in everyone’s minds. It takes an enormous amount of rigid focus and an ingrained desire for control. They are his strengths, his lifeblood.

So losing focus and control with Kendall is like showing the world where the best places to wound him are.

_Wanting_ to lose focus and control with Kendall is like jumping from a height with no landing in sight.

_Enjoying_ losing focus and control is like believing that the world will end in literally one second and that’s perfectly okay because he can’t let go of this ecstasy, not even for the end of the world. It’s really not as important as this kind of pure bliss, of Kendall in his arms and this new cord of commitment tethering them together.

“That’s what it feels like, you know,” Stewy says to Kendall afterwards, toeing Kendall’s foot with his own underneath the sheets. “A cord wrapped around us. But it’s not like, the kind that squeezes the life out of us. It’s the kind that keeps us protected because it keeps us close and it doesn’t unravel no matter how hard someone else pulls on it.”

“I have no idea what the fuck kind of analogy that is, but if you made it up, then I like it,” says Kendall, weaving their legs closer together. “Also, and I’m gonna sound like a sap, but you’re pretty fucking important to me, Stewy. I know you don’t want to hear the ‘I’m sorry’ list, but it’s not going away. I’m not tearing it up. Like Waystar is the business endgame, but you’re my life endgame. Mmph.” He buries his face in Stewy’s neck, that familiar movement. “Fucking god, that was like a greeting card sentiment.”

“Yeah, maybe, but it was pretty good.” It’s true, Stewy still doesn’t want to hear the ‘I’m sorry’ list, but knowing there was sorrow inside Kendall makes him ache in places he’d thought he’d sealed up, makes him feel like they were never truly that far apart from each other. Not far enough to break the cord.

He tips Kendall’s chin toward him until their eyes meet. “Keep giving me greeting cards. They really stroke my ego.”

Kendall chuckles. “I fucking hate that you can turn anything I say into something that benefits _you_.”

“No. No, you really don’t.”

“No, I don’t. I fucking love it. I fucking love you. Fuck greeting cards. That didn’t come from one. You, Stew. I fucking love you.”

Stewy feels like he’s made of glass, feels like he’s so vulnerable that Kendall could break him into pieces with a touch of his finger. It would be terrifying if he didn’t feel so safe.

“Well, I fucking love you back,” he says, heart beating almost to the point of pain, but a sweet one. “I’ve always loved you, honestly. Even when I didn’t do the math and string the words together. But it was there. Okay, catch me secretly writing greeting cards for a living. Hey,” he protests weakly as Kendall sucks a love bite on his neck. “Stop. I’m not edible. Do you want to go get doughnuts or something?”

“Yeah.” Kendall lays their temples together and laces their fingers. “Only if you feed them to me, though.”

“Ugh.” Stewy clenches their hands. “Absolutely fucking not.”

“I was counting on you saying that.”

“Well, I delivered.”

Kendall sinks back down onto Stewy’s chest. “Nevermind, actually,” he says between kisses on Stewy’s collarbones. “I don’t really want to move right now. I’ve missed this so bad. Missed _you_ so bad. I can’t even explain. The freedom I have with you, I can’t ever let it go again. This kind of power, the kind where I go through with what I really want…I want to exercise it all the time. So I just want to lay here with you.”

Stewy pulls Kendall back up and finds his mouth, holding his lips over it. He lets Kendall break his glass. “I want you to stay.”

“I will. I promise. Always,” Kendall whispers before closing their mouths together for the kiss.

_Always._ The word shatters Stewy, and it’s euphoria.


End file.
